An Experiential Learning Activity Demonstrating Normal and Phobic Anxiety

This article describes an activity for an undergraduate abnormal psychology course that used student-generated data to illustrate normal versus clinically significant anxiety responses related to specific phobias. Students (N = 37) viewed 14 images of low- or high-anxiety valence and rated their subjective response to each. Discussion in a subsequent class focused on differentiating normal from pathological fear and the theory of predisposed, evolution-linked phobias. Students indicated the exercise was interesting and contributed to their understanding of specific and social phobias.